COLLABORATION IN ACTION (part 2)

The second scenario for our collaboration project was to design a lesson plan with a classroom teacher.  I wanted to step out of my elementary school comfort zone (which turned out to be the most intimidating part of this project) and decided to collaborate with a high school English teacher.  It was time for me to do an inquiry-based unit (the second challenge of our project).  Ms. Wilson, my partner in the project, was awesome.  She was completely on board with the project and was very receptive to my ideas.  I had to get past my intimidation to be designing a unit advanced enough for High School Honors English IV.  Ms. Wilson was just beginning an Othello unit and we decided that this would be a perfect opportunity for an inquiry unit that would allow the students to learn more about the context of the play - whether it be directly related to the play or Elizabethan England in general.  She was excited to design a lesson that would justify her students' Honors status.  Focusing on inquiry, research skills, and a creative product to communicate ideas are, I believe, appropriate 21st century skills for higher level students.  

COLLABORATION IN ACTION (part 1)

In the first part of our unit plan assignments, we were asked to collaborate with a classmate on a unit plan/lesson plan - either inquiry or literature based.  My group (of 3) decided to choose an elementary literature-based unit for 4th grade.  We focused on an ELA unit on Native American literature and wanted it to be as cross-curricular as possible (we were thinking of how to tie it in with 4th grade NC social studies and possibly even geography).  The hardest part was choosing the unit that we were going to do and grade level, probably because this was so open-ended.  Overall, the collaboration went really well within our group.  We used digital methods mostly (google docs and email).  This made our communication very "to the point" and concise.  We operated on a high level (according to the taxonomy from our reading) of collaboration, involving one another in every aspect of the planning of our units even down to the assessment methods.  This, although it takes more time, makes the lessons and units so much more enriched.

Teacher Observation

For our teacher observation assignment, I observed one of Wentworth's best teachers - Donna Strader.  She is beyond a doubt an excellent teacher, all the teachers and students love her.  It was very interesting for me especially to have the opportunity to do this because my background is not in education.  I've never actually been in a classroom to observe before (aside from being a student myself).  It was an awesome learning experience.  I learned a lot from actually comparing "best practices" from our readings to what Ms. Strader was doing in her classroom.  There are different levels of collaboration and I assumed that, because Wentworth really seems to focus on it, that she would be operating on a very high level (using Loertsher's taxonomy).  I found out that this was not the case.  The collaboration that is happening with Ms. Strader and the media coordinator is on a very superficial level.  She IS using the media coordinator as a resource on some very specific projects BUT mostly after the lessons are already planned out.  This is not to say that she is an ineffective teacher or that her lessons are bad but they could definitely be enhanced by involving the MC earlier in the process and working more closely with her in planning and evaluating projects.